Later Today CNN Star Piers Morgan Will Face The UK Hacking Inquiry

LONDON (AP) — CNN star
interviewer Piers Morgan faces questions Tuesday about his time
at the top of Britain's tabloid industry — widely anticipated
testimony that may dredge up allegations his British newspaper
career was colored by wrongdoing.

Morgan ran two British tabloids — the News of the World and the
Daily Mirror — before his editorship was cut short by scandal in
2004. He's one of a host of tabloid newspaper executives being
called before a British inquiry into media ethics set up in the
wake of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, which has
rocked the country's press and political elite.

More than a dozen journalists have been arrested, senior
executives with Rupert Murdoch's News
Corp. media empire have lost their jobs, and top U.K. police
officers have resigned over their failure to tackle the scandal.
Witnesses at the inquiry have exposed the seamy side of British
journalism, with reporters accused of cooking up stories,
blackmailing subjects, hacking phones and paying bribes to police
officers to secure tips.

Morgan may have more juicy details to add. His memoirs contain
tantalizing references to questionably obtained material, and the
46-year-old has acknowledged condoning unethical behavior —
including overseeing payoffs to spies on rival newspapers.

Morgan denies having ever hacked a phone or knowingly run a story
based on hacked information. But he's expected to be quizzed on
statements that appear to refer to the practice — in particular a
2006 article in which he says he was played a phone message left
by former Beatle Paul McCartney on the answering machine of his
now ex-wife Heather Mills.

Mills has said there's no way Morgan could have gotten hold of
the message honestly.

The inquiry, led by Lord Justice Brian Leveson, heard earlier
Tuesday about the culture in tabloid newsrooms — one described by
some witnesses as being scarred by bullying.

Steve Turner, the general secretary of the British Association of
Journalists, said he had dealt with more than a dozen cases of
bullying in the newsroom in recent years. He blamed diminishing
circulation and "the demand to produce better stories and more of
them from a diminishing workforce" for some of the pressure, but
said the culture at Murdoch's News of the World was particularly
challenging.

That, he said, may have "pressured people more than most into
behaving appallingly."

Separately, the lawyer for former England soccer player Paul
Gascoigne suggested that the sportsman's legal action against the
News of the World was close to being settled.

Gascoigne is one of several dozen people suing the paper over
claims that their phones were hacked. Lawyer Jeremy Reed said the
case was "settling" but didn't give any further details.

Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old News of the World in July
after the full hacking scandal broke.